Dr. Tom Dooley is famous for his selfless work among the people of Laos in the 1950's. Here lay a need for health care in a land with only one western trained doctor, flanked by a multitude of witch doctors, with practices dating back to the Middle Ages. Dooley financed and ran a hospital that lay 5 miles from the border of communist Red China. His tiny 35 bed hospital was just the beginning of a new system that left the people healthier, and trained many of them to continue the work he started long after he was gone.

The book is filled with stories both cheerful and gruesome of his exploits among these uncomplaining people who learned to live with suffering so appalling I cringe to even think back upon it. Such basics as antibiotics, clean water, and a diet rich in the necessary nutrients for a baby to develop with a healthy prospect of seeing the future were lacking. A high mortality rate was more the rule than the exception.

These openhanded and accommodating individuals received Dr. Dooley and his team with a mixture of respect and suspicion. It was his deference and ability to impart the sentiment that Americans were there to help them for the sheer sake of the peoples needs, not for any political agenda, and not to conquer them as part of a realm like so many acquisitions.

The final product was more than one could hope for. The many different companies as well as private citizens that helped to make this endeavor work by volunteering their time and donations are also mentioned in the book with a pride and thankfulness I'm sure that Dooley hoped the world would recognize. This is one of the best books I have ever read. Kelsana 6/5/01

Dr. Dooley was a young US Navy Medical Officer, aboard a ship in Haiphong harbor when France was being turned out of Vietnam. Following a plea for medical help he went ashore, got to know the people, and grew to love them. He left the Navy and spent several years in the 1950s traveling among the peoples of Southeast Asia, bringing medical care to regions where whites had never before even been seen, until his return to the U.S. shortly before his death from cancer.

He saw and described many horrors committed by Communists on their own people trying to cross the new border from North to South Vietnam after the country was partitioned. Those descriptions of what was really happening stand in stark contrast to the stories popularly accepted in the U.S. a decade later.

These three books form a powerfully emotional yet factually substantiated account. They are worth searching to find and read. Would that they would be reprinted as many less worthy books are these days.

Dr. Thomas Dooley was a hero to me. Fire On the Mountain means to me the Fire yet another time after the French left for honourable reasons Indochine and still the people could not be set free. Agriculture burned and people died. Deliver Us From Evil was their petition, and the world did hear them, but too much, it would seem. Merton would have been his Confessor, but over what teletype would this have been then? I did read Merton as a girl, but it gave insufficient consolation to these wounds of the heart. On the Night They Burned the Mountain, the children of that Tigerland were again left behind. Tom Dooley didn't live to see it, and before he slept, he anguished sore. I neither need to buy these books nor see the film. I've lived in that hereafter and carry in on through the remainder of my life.

I first read these books when I was in H.S. They inspired me to want to be a better person and devote myself to good works. I know that sounds odd but these are no ordinary books. I recently reread them and found them to be even better than I remembered. These are noble books written by a noble man. Tragically the author died from cancer at a very young age. The background for these books may seem a little dated due to the fall of Communism in Russia but the subject is as pertinent now as it was then and will be hundreds of years from now. Inhumanity and humanity. The cruelty of ideolegies versus the compassion of the individual. These are an excellent choice for any reader from nine to ninety-nine.

For people who have opinions concerning US involvement in the Viet Nam conflict Tom Dooley's books should be available and recommended.

Dr. Tom Dooley wrote 3 books and was working on a fourth when he died. His mother and friends finished the 4th. The books were about his work in Vietnam prior to 1962, he died in the early 60's from cancer. I first read the Dooley books in 1964-65 and credit them for my interest in Asian cultures. I still have the four paperbacks. Dr. Tom's clinics carried on after his death but ended with the fall of South Vietnam.

Dr. Tom Dooley was a young navy doctor involved with the fall of Viet Nam, and the massive effort to help the fleeing Vietnamese people as the Comm unists entered their country.(whew). This is the story of his return to Viet Nam and his efforts to improve health care in his own small way. A magnificent story of humanity at it's best.

I agree 100% with Mr. Steven Epstein's review (February 7, 2000), about Dr America: The Lives of Thomas A Dooley 1927-1961 by James Fisher

The tale of Dr. Dooley is indeed worth telling but, sadly, this book misses the boat. The author is mired in arcane (and not terribly interesting) tales of intrigue among Catholic factions and almost lost me many times. And although this book is a biography, the author seems strangely ambivalent towards the good jungle doctor. You never get close to Dooley. Few evocative anecdotes. You get no feel for Laos. Reading it is liking eating dry toast.

Why does The Talented Mr. Ripley come to mind? I hope that someone will take another stab at writing about this remarkable man.

Certainly a provocative and interesting story, however, little context is given to set the time regarding Asia, and the Cold War. Organization is deplorable, reflecting both huge gaps and many redundancies. Three notable nonsentences make me wonder why these guys publish without an editor.